| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
224 |
ITS NATURE |
||
|
|
|||
|
syncopation here). At several junctures there is a sense of missing eighth notes, or of eighths barely suggested (in Measure 14 one may hear mentally, in place of the eighth note rest, a B that is not actually stated, and at the last eighth there is another B that is scarcely heard).
It is part of the essence of jazz improvisation that a solo sometimes may be almost as much a reflection of the instrument's nature as of the soloist's; this chorus by Johnson is a case in point. One can imagine it played by Gillespie, possibly by Parker, but in the quality and phrasing of the notes it is as purely a trombone solo as Jessicas Day is the creation of a trumpet player.
Just as Johnson s solo contradicts the allegations of excessive complexity in modern jazz, trombonist Jack Teagarden's example offers a fiery answer to modernists* accusations that exponents of the more traditional jazz styles are technically limited. The example from Blue Funk shows Teagardens opening chorus in an 18-bar theme (16 plus a two-bar tag) built mainly around a descending chromatic stairway of ninths. Taken at a very slow tempo (24 measures per minute), it enables him to give full play to his technical mastery of the instrument and to the passionate warmth and exciting sense of continuity of which he has always been preeminently capable.
Here again there are some intangibles, nuances of tone and shading that are not easily documented. The same notes played by Jay Jay Johnson certainly would lack the burry intensity of the Teagarden sound, just as Johnsons notes if played by Tea-garden would be cold, flat and meaningless. Teagarden is a master of the portamento; there are several striking examples in this solo (note particularly the gradual, almost imperceptible descent to the E Natural in Measure 14, dramatically followed by a jump of a tenth).
Curiously, a predominant feature of this solo is the effect it gives of "double time," a gambit normally associated with bop; frequent use is made of 16th notes, though never continually in the uninterrupted fashion found among bop soloists. Triplets, grace notes, appoggiaturas and occasional long notes and simple phrases (as in Measures 13, 15, 17) insure the retention of the earthy blues mood. Not for a moment does the listener have the |
|||